Texas Ry Co v. Barrett
| Decision Date | 19 April 1897 |
| Docket Number | No. 247,247 |
| Citation | 17 S.Ct. 707,41 L.Ed. 1136,166 U.S. 617 |
| Parties | TEXAS & P. RY. CO. v. BARRETT |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
John F. Dillon, W. S. Pierce, and D. D. Duncan, for plaintiff.
A. H. Garland and R. C. Garland, for defendant.
This was an action to recover for personal injuries, brought by Barrett, in the district court of Tarrant county, Tex., against the Texas & Pacific Railway Company, and removed, on the application of the company, to the circuit court of the United States for the Northern district of Texas. Plaintiff obtained a verdict and judgment, and defendant thereupon carried the case on writ of error to the circuit court of appeals for the Fifth circuit, by which the judgment was affirmed. 30 U. S. App. 196, 14 C. C. A. 373, and 67 Fed. 214.
Plaintiff's complaint averred that he 'is a resident of said Tarrant county, and that defendant is a railway corporation duly incorporated.' The petition for removal was sufficient, and, as the company was created by act of congress, the circuit court properly entertained jurisdiction. Railway Co. v. Cody, 166 U. S. 606, 17 Sup. Ct. 703.
On the trial there was evidence tending to show that Barrett, while in the employment of the company as foreman in charge of a switch engine, and at work in the company's yard, was injured by the explosion of another engine, with which he had nothing, and was not required to have anything, to do, and which had been placed by the foreman of the roundhouse on a track in the yard, with steam up, to take out a train; that the boiler of the locomotive, at the time it exploded, and for a considerable time before that, was and had been in a weak and unsafe state, by reason of the condition of the stay bolts, many of which had been broken before the explosion, and some of them for a long time before; that there were well-known methods of testing the condition of stay bolts in a boiler engine; and that, if any of these tests had been properly applied to this boiler within a reasonable time before the explosion, the true condition of the stay bolts would have been discovered.
The circuit court instructed the jury, at defendant's request, 'that the master is not the insurer of the safety of its engines, but is required to exercise only ordinary care to keep such engines in good repair, and, if he has used such ordinary care, he is not liable for any injury resulting to the servant from a defect therein not discoverable by such ordinary care'; 'that the mere fact that an injury is received by a servant in consequence of an explosion will not entitle him to a recovery, but he must, besides the fact of the explosion, show that it resulted from the fallure of the master to exercise ordinary care, either in selecting such engine, or in keeping it in reasonably safe repair'; and 'that a railway company is not required to adopt extraordinary tests for discovering defects in machinery, which...
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